Random Sorcery and Other Forms of Entertainment
by TheAllPowerfulOz
Summary: Non-Yaoi Quick-Fics. I wanted to try my hand at writing something that doesn't involve Slash… Lets see how it goes, shall we?  Quick-Fics 300 Words or More. Rating may go up.
1. Chapter 1

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_NOTE; Okay, this is how everything is set up. Before each chapter will be a note detailing the prompt I was given, whether or not it's AU, and when it's supposed to be taking place. I'd really like to hear what you guys think, and if you have an idea for a Quick-Fic._

_OZ_

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_A weird prompt I got from a friend; AU… Modern times, but not necessarily present day._

_Altair, Ezio and Desmond are triplets, they are ten years old… Run with it._

_So I did… 333 words._

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**Ch-Ch-Changes**

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Hell, for Desmond, started the year Ezio decided to grow his hair out… As if the bastard wasn't cocky enough, now he had those long, luscious, flowing locks like all the heroes on the front of romance novels…

Altair took it in stride, like he did most everything… Very little other than the neighbors two sons and their plastic swords excited him.

Desmond… did not. He was a strange creature of habit. Change was scary, change was like a doctor's visit when you knew, just KNEW they were going to give you shots for something that you didn't need, or dentist appointments with those scary looking sharp tools and bright lights… Or visiting the optometrist and the doctor blasting air into your eyes to take measurements.

Desmond, didn't like change at all. He liked his brothers, liked that they looked the same, that their mother bought them the same clothes, liked that they enjoyed the same foods and movies and playing together.

Heck, he even liked that when one of them got hurt the other two wept over the wound as well.

The sameness made him feel safe, made him feel loved.

He did not like Ezio's new _different-ness_. He did not like it simply, and plainly because not only had Ezio deviated from the haircut they'd all had since they were three years old, but he'd also decided he didn't want to hang around with his brothers anymore… No, instead he decided he was an adult and had latched onto their older brother as if stuck there by superglue.

It was not, by any means, a pleasant experience. Especially for thirteen year old Federico, who had tried to find reason after reason to tell his girlfriends as to why one of his little brothers was wedged between them watching everything they did together.

Desmond blamed the hair… Long hair made you do stupid things.

Altair just shoved him in the dirt, and when nobody was looking crouched and patted his head comfortingly.

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	2. Chapter 2

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_AC1 Timeline; _

_Malik worrying over wounded/unconscious/comatose Altair in a non-yaoi way._

_513 words._

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**A Time of Peace**

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There was a moment, after those first days of stillness, that Malik feared he wouldn't awake. That Altair would remain lying there lifeless and limp with those wounds on his chest and side sluggishly oozing his very life away.

It shouldn't have happened, Altair was too quick to be cornered— It shouldn't have happened, but it did. It did and he'd been nearly killed.

Malik had been roused from sleep in his bureau by a young informant hissing and tossing small stones through the lattice trying to get the Dai's attention.

The story had been brief, that Altair had been spotted, knocked from a rooftop and badly injured. That he was nearly half a district away in an alleyway, unable to move any further under his own power.

Malik followed without question, without comment. Creeping from shadow to shadow with his hand just a breath away from the hilt of his sword. Hidden beneath his robe.

They'd found Altair collapsed in the very rear corner of the alley, curled in on himself in a growing puddle of blood, the broken ends of arrows protruding from him at odd, unnatural angles.

He hadn't made a sound as he was lifted and half dragged to the bureau, he didn't even seem to breathe and twice Malik feared he had a dead man leaning against his shoulder.

There were times during those hellish, silent days afterward, cleaning wounds and changing saturated bandaging, that Malik feared what tomorrow would bring. Feared the infection in that wound in the back of Altair's calf would turn septic and the limb would be lost, feared that the arrow's tip hadn't been removed quickly enough, that he hadn't been quick, or diligent enough and had damned Altair to a fate worse than his own… At least Malik could still walk… Could still perform his duty with one hand.

An assassin with one leg was worthless, even if he did have both hands…

So he sat there, and waited…

And waited… And waited…

Altair's eyes cracked open seven days after his rescue, his pupils were wide and his pale face wrinkled in confusion as he blinked.

Malik held his breath, but Altair let out a frustrated grunt and his eyes closed again, body relaxing back into the darkness.

Relief was a soothing chill in his breast and Malik leaned back in his seat with a whoosh of breath. Altair was still alive, he'd struggled into consciousness once, he could—and would—do it again.

Sure enough, two days later, Malik was sitting by the window in his room with a book propped open over his knee reading, when he looked up to the man in his bed and noticed those amber eyes were squinting at him curiously.

Altair grumbled at him, his voice cracked and dry like a shallow lakebed, something about how his waters needed release and if Malik didn't help him up that release would happen all over his bed.

Malik let his breath out in a sigh and put his book aside.

So much for the peace and quiet.

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	3. Chapter 3

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_AU Early 1980's Timeline;_

_Malik and Altair are crazy __Vietnam__ vets who have become reclusive hermits on the Olympic __Peninsula__. __Ala__; Distant Thunder_

_…_

_Okay, first off, this prompt was given to me by a friend, and it is frickin' AWESOME! I am totally in love with it! And Second, THAT MOVIE IS THE MOST HORRIFIC, BEAUTIFUL THING I HAVE EVER SEEN! Hubby Dearest's grandpa is a __Vietnam__ vet and he said that it was so truthful he couldn't sleep for weeks. *shudders* _

_I decided to take this in a different direction than Distant Thunder… Because that movie just tore my heart out! So, I based it loosely on a short story I read recently entitled 'The Road to Hell'. If I can convince my professor to do it, I'll make him put it online somewhere so you guys can read it. It's a real tearjerker. _

_1234 words._

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**Islands in the Sky**

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Altair learned tai-chi in Japan; He liked to do it on mountain tops, what he called 'skyclad'.

Altair learned his religion from one of the women he sometimes referred to as his concubines. A smattering of women in Seattle…Montreal…New Orleans.

Ah, New Orleans…

Free love and all that jazz.

Malik could stand down there, hidden in the trees and fern and underbrush with his hand up shielding his eyes, watching. Thinking there was something daring, ballsy, and erotic about the way Altair moved on that overhead precipice. Just a sharp jut of limestone that threatened to break away with every rain, but it was the only place the forest was thin enough that sun got through the canopy.

Altair liked to say it was so he could eat some sun before he had to descend into the jungle again.

Malik liked the way he said 'eat some sun' as the sharp blade of his tongue wetted some rolling paper on his blunts. Twisting the ends so they stayed together. It made him think of hamburgers. As if the sun were something physical you could chomp your teeth into.

"You just like going up there so you can pretend you're flying… One of these days you're going to get so stoned you'll take a leap and then where will I be when your son comes looking for you? What will I do when he hikes all the way up here just to find you've killed yourself swimming in the clouds?"

Altair snorted and picked up his radio, brushing past Malik's empty left sleeve as if the press of his body on the intimate, forbidden place was answer enough.

"I won't mourn you!" Malik hisses at his back. "I'll be glad to have you gone! You stupid _fuck!"_

Altair hikes his jacket up, hitches the back of his pants down and moons him for his effort, then titters like a little girl when all Malik has to defend himself with is an empty tin of green beans thrown at the crack of his ass.

Malik occupies himself for a few hours checking the perimeter. Watering a few trees and taking a few half-assed shots at a deer. They haven't had meat in a week and a half and he's sick of field rations.

It's hard to aim a rifle with only one arm and he misses the deer.

Goddamn it…

There are a few fish in one of his traps though, and bear scat in the area… He double checks the perimeter and buries their empty tins… Pisses on a few more trees to ensure the bear knows they own this area and it can politely fuck off or add its nice fuzzy pelt to the collection across Malik's bed and its meat to their bellies.

Bear sounds really good right about now… Mmmmm.

The wind has shifted and he can faintly hear Altair's music. He doesn't know if Altair is armed or not. Most likely he is, so he makes his way up the mountain, trudging through mud and following the nearly invisible trail the taller man left behind.

Years of living here, years of bush warfare has honed their senses to wolflike sharpness and he picks out the trail easily.

Malik likes to imagine he's a werewolf like in that movie he saw with his wife before she left him. How many years ago was that now? Five? Six? He didn't blame her for leaving… If he could, he would have left himself too… He would have clocked out by now if he could, but that isn't an option anymore. Someone has to make sure Altair doesn't take a swan dive off a cliff and leave a nasty mess for Desmond to find when the kid felt the need to see his dad again…

Altair is still up there, on the very edge, visible as a shifting dark shadow against the sunset. Every so often a cherry blazes between his lips and Malik imagines he can smell that sickly sweet smoke skimming down on the lines of electric poetry wafting from that poor abused radio.

Altair knows he's there, he's just smart enough, and just hyper aware enough to know everything in moments like this. Flexing, shifting with the cold wind, almost dancing with the sun and the moon and the stars that fly in his eyes.

It's times like this that Malik knows without a shadow of a doubt that they're both insane. Sane enough to know right from wrong, stupid enough not to care, and insane enough to do it again tomorrow.

Your nerves and mind are capable of waking up to impossibilities a normal man would die thinking of. They knew this better than most. It was like a third eye… It took so much unspeakable effort to open it, and once it was open, you couldn't close it again for anything.

Altair, even when he was stoned, drunk, half asleep and taking a piss with one hand, could kill you in fifteen different ways without even breaking a sweat.

Malik may get his boots wet, but was capable of the same thing.

They didn't know how to be 'normal' anymore. They were too dangerous, too hard and high strung for the fragile world.

So, barely six weeks after Altair took refuge here on the Mountain, Malik packed up his things from the shitty little apartment above the bar where he'd been staying after his wife left, and followed him.

They'd hated one another, still did on some level, but there was something else now. Knowledge, wisdom within the madness…

Malik would rather suffer the intolerable peace between them than risk being killed by Altair when he got in one of his moods… When sweat poured from his skin and he seemed to melt into the jungle as if he were ONE with it.

Twice now Malik had been able to rouse him from such a state and prevent the cold blooded murder of some game warden come to enquire exactly why there was a freshly skinned deer hanging there in that tree when it was most definitely not deer season.

Two or three times of nearly being picked off by the former sniper and the game wardens learned to overlook such things.

Besides, it was harder for Malik to use a rifle and his rational mind had time to wrestle the panic and adrenaline back before anything happened. It wasn't easy by any means, and most of the time left him sick, but he could do it more easily than Altair could. Altair who was so consumed by his senses and his thoughts sometimes he seemed ghostlike, as if he were only there as a hallucination and Malik was all alone in this god forsaken jungle.

He was here though. Alive, whole—in body at least—and out there somewhere crouching in the bush waiting… breathing. ONE with the world and the war and the chaos. Malik knew it like the taste of acid on the back of his tongue. He knew he was here not only to protect the world from their madness, but to protect Altair from the world.

_'You know the day destroys the night, night divides the day. Try to run, try to hide, break on through to the other side! Break on through to the other side. Break on through to the other side.'_

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_I challenge anyone who reads this to take the prompt and do their own version! I would absolutely LOVE to read what you can come up with! _

_I actually might take it back up myself and make a longer fic of it. _

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